Early evidence for proto-Chinese millet agriculture is carbon-dated to about 7,000 BC.

The Peiligang culture of Xinzheng county, Henan was excavated in 1977.

With agriculture came increased population, the ability to store and redistribute crops, and to support specialist craftsmen and administrators.

In late Neolithic times, the Yellow River valley began to establish itself as a cultural center, where the first villages were founded; the most archaeologically significant of those was found at Banpo, Xi'an.

The Yellow River was so named because of the loess that would build up on the bank and down in the earth then it would sink creating a yellowish tint to the water.

The early history of China is complicated by the lack of a written language during this period coupled with the existence of documents from later time periods attempting to describe events that occurred several centuries before.

The problem in some sense stems from centuries of introspection on the part of the Chinese people which has blurred the distinction between fact and fiction in regards to this early history.

By 7000 BC, the Chinese were farming millet, giving rise to the Jiahu culture.

At Damaidi in Ningxia, 3,172 cliff carvings dating to 6,000-5,000 BC have been discovered "featuring 8,453 individual characters such as the sun, moon, stars, gods and scenes of hunting or grazing." These pictographs are reputed to be similar to the earliest characters confirmed to be written Chinese.

Later Yangshao culture was superseded by the Longshan culture around 2500 BC.

WUHAN, April 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese archaeologists said newly found evidence proves that a valley of Qingjiang River, a tributary on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, might be one of the regions where Homo sapiens, or modern man, originated.

The finding challenges the "Out-of-Africa" hypothesis of modern human origins, according to which about 100,000 years ago modern humans originated in Africa, migrated to other continents, and replaced populations of archaic humans across the globe.

The finding comes from a large-scale excavation launched in the Qingjiang River Valley in 1980s when construction began on a range of hydro power stations on the Qingjiang River, a fellow researcher with the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Archaeologists discovered three human tooth fossils in one mountain cave in Mazhaping Village, in the Gaoping Township of Jianshi County, western Hubei Province, and found pieces of lithictechnology and evidence of fire usage in Minor Cave in Banxia. There were similar findings in Nianyu Mountain and in Zhadong Cavein Banxia, all in Changyang Prefecture of the Qiangjiang River Valley.

A special research panel named the Jianshi Man research team has been set up to analyze the findings.

Zheng Shaohua, a member of the Jianshi man research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, confirmed the tooth fossils belonged to humans dating back between 2.15 and 1.95 million years ago.

The archaeologists also found fossils of bone implements in the cultural strata at the ruins where the human tooth fossils were discovered.

The fossilized bone implements bear traces of human beating, testifying that humans, not apes, lived inside the mountain cave, said Qiu Zhanxiang, another member on the Jianshi Man research team.

The pieces of lithic technology and traces of human fire usage found in Minor Cave in Banxia were said to date back 130,000 years, the ruins of human fire usage in Nianyu Mountain were dated as 120,000 years or 90,000 years old, while pieces of lithic technology and traces of fire usage found in Zhadong Cave in Banxia, were dated as 27,000 years old, said Professor Zheng.

Before these latest archaeological findings, Chinese archaeologists had found fossils of what is now known as ChangyangMan in 1957 under the leadership of renowned Chinese paleoanthropologist Jia Lanpo. Changyang Man represents early Homosapiens dating back 200,000 years.

The latest archaeological findings together with the earlier discovery of Changyang Man all prove there was continuity in Homo sapiens' development in China, said Liu Qingzhu, head of the Archaeology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"They are also of great significance to research on Paleolithic era in China and East Asia, and theories regarding multiple origins of mankind," said Liu.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Early Humans In China One Million Years Ago

Science Daily — Chronology and adaptability of early humans in different paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental settings are important topics in the study of

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------China houses several early-human (Paleolithic) archaeological sites along the Nihewan Basin near Mongolia, some with artifacts that date back about 1 million years ago. Deng et al. analyze one specific locality in the Nihewan Basin, called the Feiliang Paleolithic Site, where several stone artifacts and mammalian bone fragments have been found buried in basin silts.

By analyzing remnant magnetizations of basin silt layers and comparing these data with charts of known magnetic reversals, the authors identify that the artifact layer was deposited about 1.2 million years ago, just prior to a major climate transition that occurred during the mid-Pleistocene. The transition brought increased climate variability to the region.

This finding, coupled with other studies, indicates a prominent early human presence in the high northern latitudes of East Asia. The authors indicate that further studies on the artifacts themselves could reveal the manner in which humans weathered these climate shifts.

Title: Magnetochronology of the Feiliang Paleolithic site in the Nihewan Basin and implications for early human adaptability to high northern latitudes in East Asia

According to the "Oriental Morning Post", archaeologists recently excavated residential sites of human settlement in early New Stone Age (9,000 to 8,000 years ago) in the Peiligang Cultural layer of Tang Period at 13 kilometers south Xinzheng City, Henan Province of China. It is not only the first time for China to excavate large-area relic of prehistorically civilization, but also is the first time to discover "double-room" habitat (a large and a small).

Zhang Songlin, director of the Zhengzhou Cultural Relics and Archaeological Institute said that the unearthed relic site include 60 houses sites, covering more than 6,000 square meters. It is divided into three groups, about 20 for each. At the regional center of each group, there is the so-called "double-room" house, which was most likely belonging to important figures in the ethnic groups.

Recent excavations at the Vinh Yen relic site in Van Thanh commune, southern Khanh Hoa province, have revealed numerous artefacts that prove the site was a ceramic workshop dating back an estimated 3,000 years.

At the excavation site, archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Khanh Hoa Museum found more than 120,000 pieces of ceramic objects including jars, pots and bowls, and about 402 tools used in ceramics and bronze casting.

They also unearthed eight graves that contained bronze, stone and ceramic objects.

This is the first time metal casting tools have been found in the southern central region.

- A new analysis of the dental fossils of human ancestors suggests that Asian populations played a larger role than Africans in colonizing Europe millions of years ago, said a study released Monday.

The findings challenge the prevailing "Out of Africa" theory, which holds that anatomically modern man first arose from one point in Africa and fanned out to conquer the globe, and bolsters the notion that Homo sapiens evolved from different populations in different parts of the globe.

The "Out of Africa" scenario has been underpinned since 1987 by genetic studies based mainly on the rate of mutations in mitochondrial DNA, a cell material inherited from the maternal line of ancestry.

But for this study, European researchers opted to study the tooth fossil record of modern man's ancestors because of their high component of genetic expression.

The investigators examined the shapes of more than 5,000 teeth from human ancestors from Africa, Asia and Europe dating back millions of years.

They found that European teeth had more Asian features than African ones.

They also noted that the continuity of the Eurasian dental pattern from the Early Pleistocene until the appearance of Upper Pleistocene Neanderthals suggests that the evolutionary courses of the Eurasian and African continents were relatively independent for a long period.

"The history of human populations in Eurasia may not have been the result of a few high-impact replacement waves of dispersals from Africa, but a much more complex puzzle of dispersals and contacts among populations within and outside continents," the researchers wrote.

"In the light of these results, we propose that Asia has played an important role in the colonization of Europe, and that future studies on this issue are obliged to pay serious attention to the 'unknown' continent."

The paper was written by researchers at Spain's national center for research into human evolution in Burgos and appears in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A collection of fossils is pictured in Nairobi's National museum, in September 2006.

A new analysis of the dental fossils of human ancestors suggests that Asian populations played a larger role than Africans in colonizing Europe millions of years ago, according to a study, released on Monday.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stone Age rice farms found in China

Scientists find evidence of mass rice cultivation 7,700 years ago.

Click-2-ListenLOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Stone Age Chinese began cultivating rice more than 7,700 years ago by burning trees in coastal marshes and building dams to hold back seawater, converting the marshes to rice paddies that would support growth of the high-yield cereal grain, researchers plan to report today.

New analysis of sediments from the site of Kuahuqiao at the mouth of the Yangtze River near Hangzhou provides the earliest evidence in China of such large-scale environmental manipulation, experts said.

"It shows people were changing the environment, actively manipulating the system, and well on their way to having an agricultural way of life," said University of Toronto anthropologist Gary Crawford, who wasn't involved in the study.

Using data from the site, it is possible to extrapolate a timeline back to the first attempts at domesticating rice, which would have occurred about 10,000 years ago, said archaeologist Li Liu of La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, who was also not involved. That is contemporary with the development of agriculture in the Middle East.

The finding, being published today in the journal Nature, also sheds new light on an ongoing controversy in archaeology: How long did it take for crops to become fully domesticated?

The evidence from China, and new finds from elsewhere, indicate that the process took much longer than researchers previously thought, said archaeobotanist Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Nonetheless, she said, there is now "little doubt that by 7,700 years ago, these people were dedicated rice farmers. ... I think people

WUHAN, April 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese archaeologists said newly found evidence proves that a valley of Qingjiang River, a tributary on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, might be one of the regions where Homo sapiens, or modern man, originated.

The finding challenges the "Out-of-Africa" hypothesis of modern human origins, according to which about 100,000 years ago modern humans originated in Africa, migrated to other continents, and replaced populations of archaic humans across the globe.

The finding comes from a large-scale excavation launched in the Qingjiang River Valley in 1980s when construction began on a range of hydro power stations on the Qingjiang River, a fellow researcher with the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Archaeologists discovered three human tooth fossils in one mountain cave in Mazhaping Village, in the Gaoping Township of Jianshi County, western Hubei Province, and found pieces of lithictechnology and evidence of fire usage in Minor Cave in Banxia. There were similar findings in Nianyu Mountain and in Zhadong Cavein Banxia, all in Changyang Prefecture of the Qiangjiang River Valley.

A special research panel named the Jianshi Man research team has been set up to analyze the findings.

Zheng Shaohua, a member of the Jianshi man research team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, confirmed the tooth fossils belonged to humans dating back between 2.15 and 1.95 million years ago.

The archaeologists also found fossils of bone implements in the cultural strata at the ruins where the human tooth fossils were discovered.

The fossilized bone implements bear traces of human beating, testifying that humans, not apes, lived inside the mountain cave, said Qiu Zhanxiang, another member on the Jianshi Man research team.

The pieces of lithic technology and traces of human fire usage found in Minor Cave in Banxia were said to date back 130,000 years, the ruins of human fire usage in Nianyu Mountain were dated as 120,000 years or 90,000 years old, while pieces of lithic technology and traces of fire usage found in Zhadong Cave in Banxia, were dated as 27,000 years old, said Professor Zheng.

Before these latest archaeological findings, Chinese archaeologists had found fossils of what is now known as ChangyangMan in 1957 under the leadership of renowned Chinese paleoanthropologist Jia Lanpo. Changyang Man represents early Homosapiens dating back 200,000 years.

The latest archaeological findings together with the earlier discovery of Changyang Man all prove there was continuity in Homo sapiens' development in China, said Liu Qingzhu, head of the Archaeology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"They are also of great significance to research on Paleolithic era in China and East Asia, and theories regarding multiple origins of mankind," said Liu.

- Chinese archeologists have concluded that the two million years old human fossils found in Wushan County, Chongqing municipality from 1985 to 1988 belong to the earliest human species in China.

The lower jawbone fragment, an incisor and more than 230 pieces of stone tools of the so-called Wushan Man pre-dated the fossils of the Yuanmou Man by 300,000 years, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

The Yuanmou Man was discovered in southwestern Yunnan Province in the 1960s. It was previously regarded as the oldest human species found in China.

Huang Wanbo, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said various dating techniques corroborated earlier findings that the geological layer containing the Wushan Man fossils and artifacts is two to 2.04 million years old.

Huang said his team of experts dug up and examined more stone tools and animal fossils at the Longgupo Site in Wushan Mountain during excavations from 1997 to 1999 and 2003 to 2006. British, Canadian and French experts joined Chinese archeologists in the diggings.

The professor said more diggings at Longgupo will be done next year to find more evidence.

Since October this year, Chinese archaeologists have been busy excavating a Neolithic shell mound site in city Chongzuo of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwest China.

Workers toil on the excavation of a Neolithic site in Chongzuo, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southwest China, on Tuesday, December 4, 2007.

To date, archaeologists have unearthed numerous pieces of stone, bone and mussel implements, ornamental items and the remains of plants and animals in over 10 pre-historic tombs located 1.6 meters under the ground.

Furthermore, they found a well preserved human being skeleton at the excavation site. Experts presume that the site belongs to the middle or late Neolithic era, about 6,000 years ago.

An ancient earthen jar with a human-body design painted on it, the first of its kind ever discovered in China, has been unearthed in Lintao City, northwest China's Gansu Province.

An ancient earthen jar with a human-body design painted on it, the first of its kind ever discovered in China, has been unearthed in Lintao City, northwest China's Gansu Province.

The 30-cm-tall jar, discovered by local peasants, has a pair ofasymmetrical handles and a fish-type mouth, which is common in ancient pottery unearthed in Gansu, says Wang Haidong, vice president of the provincial Research Institute of Ancient Painted Pottery.

The jar dated back about 3,200 years ago, belonging to the Majiayao culture type (about 3300 B.C. to 2050 B.C.). The design of two human bodies, painted in black pigment, was the first ever seen in China, Wang Haidong says.

Clearly painted and lifelike, the two figures are in different postures, with intact trunks, legs and arms, heads and facial features.

Designs related to human bodies had been found on pottery unearthed in China before, yet all of them were clay figures, different from the two figures depicted in lines, according to Wang.

The discovery of a human body design on ancient pottery indicates that the ancient Chinese people were skilled in drawing and proves that pottery designs are the origin of traditional Chinese paintings, Wang says.